Winger

  Joey let go of my face.

  “I play rugby,” I said. “I got eighteen stitches.”

  “What a stud!” Mrs. Kurtz said. She always said the dorkiest things, but I never met a student who didn’t love her. Then she tousled my wet hair, which, due to her mysterious, my-best-friend’s-mom-kind-of-hotness, made me feel weak and flustered and convinced that I was destined to keep making the same kinds of stupid mistakes with girls over and over, no matter how spectacular my 2 x BALLS argument to Annie was, and she said, “Maybe you should take it easy today, Ryan Dean.”

  “I think Ryan Dean should skip our study group tonight,” Joey said. “So he can rest. We have our first game tomorrow.”

  I fired a look at Joey, then at Megan.

  I sighed.

  Joey was right, and I realized then that I was still just making excuses to avoid dealing with my out-of-control Megan thing.

  Megan said, “I’ll miss you tonight, Ryan Dean.” Then she put her hand over mine.

  Ugh!

  “You should definitely stay in bed tonight,” Mrs. Kurtz said. I, of course, thought this was a very hot thing to say.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Kurtz,” I said. “Thanks, Joe. Sorry, Megan.”

  But to me, my voice sounded so pathetic, almost like I was crying.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  IT HAPPENED AT PRACTICE.

  The worst thing imaginable.

  Practice is always relaxed and fun the day before a game, especially in the rain. Coach would usually just talk about a game plan, then we’d play a fun little scrimmage, just so we could get all muddy. Nothing serious.

  My head was taped up, so I was okay, and I was glad Coach could see that I was ready for the game. We were all just having fun.

  Seanie and I ended up on opposite teams, playing sevens, which, like I said, is a much more wide-open and fast game with fewer pileups. I had the ball and was running downfield when I got caught up in a tackle from a flanker who was playing on Seanie’s team.

  In rugby, when you’re tackled, you have to let go of the ball. Usually, you do it in a way that makes it easy for your own teammates to pick it up. But when I released the ball, no one was there to get it, so Seanie stepped right over me and poached the ball away for his team.

  And the terrible thing is, right when he stepped through, he planted his foot between my legs.

  Yeah.

  Like the world wasn’t big enough for Seanie to find somewhere else to put his fucking foot.

  And that’s how Sean Russell Flaherty, my good friend, the same guy who contrived so many Internet hoaxes about so many people, the same guy who’d told Annie Altman, the girl I am insanely in love with, that I got drunk with Chas Becker the night before school began, that same guy, wearing size twelve metal cleats, stepped right onto my balls.

  I became a black hole.

  Let me explain the physics of having your balls stepped on.

  The entire Ryan Dean West universe instantly collapsed to the size of a five-eighths-inch metal cleat stud, and everything I knew, everything I would ever know, got sucked into that pinpoint of agony.

  Newton obviously skipped that one crucial law.

  When my hearing came back, I heard Seanie saying, “Uh-oh.”

  And I’m pretty sure that everyone in the Pacific Northwest heard Ryan Dean West shout, “YOUSTEPPEDONMYFUCKINGNUTS YOUSONOFABITCH!”

  Yes, I will admit to cussing that time.

  My universe gradually began expanding, but so did the agony. I could think again, and the thinking led to a heightened sensation of pain, if there could be such a thing, and a frightening realization, too.

  Mrs. Singer.

  Catastrophic penis injury.

  You have got to be fucking kidding me.

  I must be out of my mind.

  And as I lay on my side, in the fetal position, hands clutching for what I could only imagine in my most horrific visions had been damaged beyond salvation, my teammates formed, for the second time in the past twenty-four hours, a mournful and morbidly fascinated circle around me.

  “He’s dead,” one of them said.

  “If he isn’t dead, he should kill himself immediately,” another added.

  “Did you really step on his nuts?” A third one.

  I tried to answer them, but the only sound I could make sounded something like ehhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggh, and, shuddering, lying there with my face in an expanding puddle of mud, I realized I couldn’t unclench my jaw.

  Coach M blew his whistle to break practice.

  I rolled onto my back in the mud, my face turned up into the rain, eyes blurred, scanning the darkness of the clouds for the giant face of a mocking God who might be up there laughing at my stitched-and-stomped-on-skinny-bitch-ass.

  “Not exactly the best two days of your life, eh, Ryan Dean?” Coach tried to smile, looking down at me, rain dripping from the brim of his hat. “Can you move?”

  And Seanie fell beside me, trying to help sit me up.

  But he was kind of laughing when he said, “Dude, my bad, Ryan Dean. And I know you’ve probably waited all your life to hear another guy say this to you, but, dude, how are your balls?”

  And, all at once, I somehow instantly composed a haiku in my mind about how much I hated Seanie Flaherty, and, in a simultaneous flash of inspiration, derived a kind of mathematical, tautological formula about reality, that I could easily envision as a Venn diagram:

  Finding Humor in Getting Hit in the Balls = The Universe Minus One

  Seanie helped me to my feet. My head was groggy, my eyes swirled with tears of pain, and I felt like throwing up. The other guys were already making their way into the locker room and the warmth of the showers.

  I slipped my hand down inside my compression shorts, just to make sure everything was still attached properly. Something stung, and when I pulled my hand out and looked at my fingers, there was blood on them.

  Crap.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Seanie Flaherty,

  Asshole, you stepped on my nuts.

  Please. Someone kill me.

  “Here,” I said, dropping the folded paper beside Seanie where he sat eating dinner. “I wrote a haiku about how much I hate your stinking guts, Seanie.”

  “Dude, how gay are you?” Seanie said in his usual deadpan, focusing on his food and opening the note. “You wrote me a haiku about your balls.”

  JP was just sitting down across the table. I didn’t care. I wasn’t talking to him, and he wasn’t going to keep me away from my friends.

  And then Joey asked, “What did the doctor say, Ryan Dean?”

  Yeah. Here’s another thing I realized: You’d think that receiving an injury to your balls is probably the worst thing that can possibly happen to any guy, but it’s not.

  Going to the doctor for an injury to your balls is much, much worse.

  So here I was, sitting down to eat among friends and enemies alike, with the alluringly hot and faintly moustached Isabel, wide-eyed in rapt attentiveness, no doubt taking it all down so she could get right back to the recuperating Annie Altman and deliver an update on the status of Ryan Dean West’s testicles.

  “Was that hot nurse there?” Seanie practically drooled.

  “No,” I said. “Just Doctor No-gloves.”

  “Eww,” Seanie said. “Did he touch your little Westicles?”

  I took a bite of chicken, pretending that was all I was going to say about the matter. I looked over at JP, and he looked away.

  “Are you going to tell us, or what?” Seanie said impatiently.

  I paused to gather my thoughts.

  “Do you believe in witches?” I asked.

  “I give up,” Seanie said, and took a drink of milk.

  I looked at Isabel. It was kind of embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as telling everyone in the infirmary why I showed up, scared pale and covered in mud with my hand thrust down my shorts, holding onto my balls. Even my friends were too embarrassed to go there with me,
afraid they might have to face their own fears and watch in that cold examination room while I sat naked on a rustling paper sheet and the doctor looked me over. Head wounds were one thing, but, like I said, no boy ever wants to come face to face with a catastrophic penis injury.

  “It’s just a cut,” I said. “On my balls. He put a Band-Aid on it.”

  “Was it a SpongeBob Band-Aid?” Seanie asked, almost spitting out his milk when he said it.

  Even Joey laughed.

  I am such a loser.

  “Dude,” Seanie announced, “how awesome is that? You are the only guy I’ve ever known in my entire fucking life who had to have a doctor put a Band-Aid on his ballsack. That’s the kind of thing you just can’t make up. Ryan Dean West, you are going to be a fucking legend!”

  “Seanie,” I said, “I can’t even begin to put into words how much I hate you right now.”

  “Aww . . . I love you too, Ryan Dean,” he said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I NEVER COULD SLEEP THE night before a game, especially a first game.

  After dinner, Joey kept his appointment for our Calculus study group with Megan at the library, and I came back to O-Hall alone and tried to relax in bed. But it was absolutely impossible to get comfortable, considering the locations of my injuries. And I know I’m a pig for thinking it, but I really wanted to make out with Megan again.

  So I just lay there, staring up at the ceiling with my knees bent, listening to Chas’s breathing, wondering if Annie had read my note, and what she was thinking about at that moment, if she was awake like me.

  And I knew that if you could keep score for such a thing, and, of course, I did keep that score, my Degree of Loserdom would be nothing short of godlike.

  To make matters even worse, by midnight I had to pee. But there was no way in hell I was going to go down that hallway on the night before a game and run the risk of a face-to-face with Mrs. Singer again. So I held it as long as I could, but that just made my Band-Aided wound hurt more. When I couldn’t stand it any more, I fumbled around the side of the mattress where I stored that Gatorade bottle Joey brought me when I was sick. I unscrewed the top—Mmm! It still smelled like lemon—and, kneeling on the top bunk, I filled it to within half an inch of overflowing.

  The Ryan Dean West Emergency Gatorade Bottle Nighttime Urinal was an invention of depraved genius. After a quick check on the snugness of my Band-Aid, and, pausing momentarily to wonder how many days it might take to fall off, since—sweet mother of God—there was no way I was going to yank it and all the hairs affixed to it off, I screwed the lid back on as tightly as possible, tucked the bottle down by my feet, where I noticed it produced a very pleasant warmth, pulled the covers back over me, and finally went to sleep.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  AT SIX IN THE MORNING, we were all on the bus heading down from Pine Mountain to play our first rugby match of the year. It had stopped raining during the night, so it was going to be a perfect and soggy day for rugby. Twenty-five players rode on the bus, most of us stretched out in our own seats, along with the coach and a couple other adults, and I swear I had to go from seat to seat and personally tell the story of the Band-Aid on my balls to every one of the boys who hadn’t been there at dinner the night before.

  It was a four-hour bus ride to Sacred Heart. Our kickoff was scheduled for one o’clock; and, as always after the game, in a rugby tradition called a social, we would sit down with the opposing team and have dinner before our ride back to Pine Mountain. We always had to wear our school uniforms and ties whenever we showed up for a rugby match; that was just the way things were done. So every one of us knew it was going to be a long and tiring day.

  But we didn’t know just how tough, and unexpected, things would actually turn out to be.

  We sang almost the entire way there. I don’t know how Coach M put up with it. It was like he was deaf or something, because he never showed the slightest expression even when the songs got completely vulgar. It was like singing was the only time he’d tolerate our cussing, and he’d just keep his attention pinned on his notebook, where he’d organize rosters, medical forms, and notes on plays. But I could tell the singing was making the driver of our chartered bus really agitated. He started looking so frustrated and mad, but I could hear Coach M explain to him in his Henry Higgins tone of voice, “They are a rugby team. They sing. There’s nothing I, you, or God can do about it beyond hope that they eventually tire.”

  And just before we got to the field, someone got into our first-aid kit and secretly passed around Band-Aids to everyone on the team except me. So when we arrived at the locker rooms at Sacred Heart, and the headmaster, who was dressed in his full priestly attire, and a couple nuns from the school greeted us, every one of our players with the exception of me came down the steps at the front of the bus wearing a black and blue school tie, white dress shirt, and khaki pants with a Band-Aid stuck across his fly.

  Nice.

  We changed into our uniforms and took the field to warm up. I had my head taped up, and I felt like I was completely ready to go. When Sacred Heart came out to begin stretching, we ran around them on the field, singing “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” which was the only song we were allowed to sing at a Catholic school because it wasn’t really dirty, it was just about a guy who fathers an illegitimate child and then gets his balls shotgunned off by the girl’s father. Tame by our standards, and as Coach said, it wasn’t likely to incite a religious war or anything since it contained a moral lesson.

  But the Sacred Heart boys didn’t think it was very funny, and instead of singing something back at us, which is what any decent and proper rugby team would do, they just scowled and prayed.

  I am not religious at all. Some of the kids at PM are, though, and we do have a nondenominational chapel on the grounds for kids who don’t go home on weekends. But we always prayed before games, and praying with the team was the only kind of praying I ever felt good about. So, a few minutes before kickoff, we would all take to our knees in a circle and put our arms around each other, and Kevin Cantrell would stand over us and give thanks for the day and for the other team that was there to play with us, and for being able to play the greatest sport that was ever created, and hope that everyone, even our opponents, would be safe and have fun.

  Then, just a few minutes before the game, Coach M pulled me aside and told me that he wasn’t going to let me start, that he was putting in Mike Bagnuolo, a sophomore winger who was actually older than me, because he wanted to see how Bags could handle himself.

  Of course I was crushed, but I knew better than to say anything or try to plead with Coach. That’s just something you never do on the sideline of a game. At least Bags was wearing number sixteen and I got to keep the eleven, so everyone knew who the real left wing was. That’s how numbers work in rugby: a player doesn’t pick his number, his position on the team determines that, and it’s something that never gets messed with. So all I could do was watch the game start from the sideline and just hope that by some miracle I’d get a chance to sub in.

  Joey was standing there with us when Coach M made his decision, and I could see he was upset about the call, because he looked like he felt sorry for me too. But he shook Bags’s hand and said, “I’ll be looking for you out there,” and then he said, “Sorry, Ryan Dean, Coach is just being careful,” and he tapped the bandage on my head.

  “I know that, Joey, but I still totally hate JP.”

  “You remember how I told you to get your shit together? Well, Megan couldn’t stop talking about you last night. So when’s it going to happen, Ryan Dean?”

  Then Joey ran off to his spot on the field, and all I could do was watch the game begin.

  The worst part of it, worse than Joey’s scolding—because I knew he was right—was that it was the kind of game I love to play in. Our teams were so evenly matched, and every time it looked like a score was about to happen, the other team would crank up its defense and force a turnover. So it went that way
, scoreless, for almost the entire thirty-five-minute half, and then finally JP got called on a dangerous tackle and Sacred Heart scored a penalty kick just as the half ended, to go up 3–0. And I was kind of glad that JP was the one who gave up those points, because everyone could see how terrible he felt about it.

  Bastard.

  In rugby, halftime only lasts five minutes and the players are not allowed to leave the field. And unlike other sports, there are no substitutions where a player can go out and come back in, which, I think, is one of the reasons the football team hated us so much—because rugby players had to be in such better condition than players in just about any other sport. During halftime, though, Coach brought the team in and said, “Bags is coming out. Ryan Dean, mind your head,” and that absolutely made my day.

  Joey shook my hand, and I pulled him close to me and whispered, “Look, I swear I will take care of the Megan thing as soon as I can. Just get me the ball.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  And he did. About five minutes into the half, Joey skipped the ball past both of our centers, right into my hands, and all I had to do was beat the opposing winger, who had no chance of catching me. I centered the ball right between the posts and put it down to score a try, and I did think about Annie as soon as I got to my feet.

  Seanie was our team’s kicker, and he scored the conversion, so PM went up 7–3. We chest bumped each other after his kick, and Seanie laughed, saying, “I think that’s the gayest thing I’ve ever done.”

  And I said, “No, it’s not even close. You wrote me a haiku and you asked me how my balls were yesterday, remember?”

  The score stayed locked at 7–3, and we ended up winning the game.

  We had to shower and change back into our ties before the postgame social. The food was great, and the best part of the afternoon was that the Sacred Heart boys all had cell phones and Coach let us borrow them to call our parents and tell them about the game.